The out-of-tune Olympiacos Orchestra retreats to Spain

Olympiacos’ Spanish withdrawal was completed (for the first round of this year’s EuroLeague) with their fourth consecutive defeat against the ACB teams, in the SEF! After Barcelona, ​​​​Real and Baskonia, it was Valencia’s turn to send the “red-whites” to tea and silence the occasionally volcanic SEF, even if the organized platform was not completely filled.

If anyone makes a comparison with last year’s data, they will see that Olympiacos were 3/4 at home and only lost to Valencia, while in Spain they scored an impressive four out of four games! Okay, the comparisons with last year don’t speak for Piraeus.

The simple takeaway is that the team’s two top scorers are gone (Vezenkov and Slukas). And the even simpler fact that at least two of those included in the squad (Sikma and Brazdeikis) do not yet meet Olympiakos’ requirements. These also apply, but the most important thing of all is different. Last year Olympiacos Piraeus started and ended the year with almost no serious losses. This year they all came together.

McKissick, Goss, Milutinov and Sikma (Fal had also scored earlier in the year) were dropped, while two additional players were recently added, Petrusev and Mitrou Long, who has been eligible since January. Essentially Olympiacos has…two teams. One with the players who are hot, who keep games on their toes and have their rhythm, and the other with those who, either due to injury or because they are rookies, have to keep up with the others, in the midst of continuous games and minimal training .

The rotation and “baking” of the second team must necessarily occur in games where every detail counts. We have already pointed this out. Injuries force those who stay behind to overexert themselves, risking their own injury, while those who return take time that doesn’t exist. The carousel is non-stop and sometimes a year goes by without anyone noticing.

Bartzokas, thinking he needed to synchronize his two teams, started the rotation early. He knew he wouldn’t have Peters from Jamball, so at “4” Shikma would play first and then Petrusev. Milutinov would trade Fal, Goss for Walkup, McKissick for Papanikolaou, and Laretzakis for Kanan. The truth is that with his main five mistakes, even if he lost … a penalty under the basket, even if he made six (!) mistakes in the quarter, Olympiacos had a rhythm very easily and in fact “cheaply” With one He took the lead with a 12-0 series and gave his coach the right to think about the changes.

As he himself admitted after the game, he may have made a mistake in officiating the game. He was of course talking about the result and the image his team had in the second quarter “We went completely off plan, we didn’t follow the tactics we had chosen. The result was that we were behind in the table, down nine points and very stressed and feeling almost unbearable pressure.”

Everything wrong and upside down

Somehow the “red and white” orchestra was completely out of tune instead of synchronizing. Olympiacos played one of the worst games in the last three years:

✐ Scored only 58 points, with six misses and seven shots (9/16), while shooting a very poor 41% on 2-pointers and 29% on 3-pointers! Such a bad attack can’t win anyone.

✎ I made 15 mistakes, one too many, especially for a home team. No matter how intense Valencia’s pressure was, it was unjustified, especially when the ball went through the hands of its players or the passes were marked by a… supernatural giant and not a teammate. The ratio of assists (15) to fouls (15) is disappointing and also prohibitive for victory.

✏ The 11 offensive rebounds that the guests got also hurt Olympiacos. Some of them went into the hands of the Moubros players, while Piraeus wanted to come out as a surprise to reduce the difference. One, two, three, the fourth time… Valencia hit the goal and the home team’s attempt always had the same result: a draw!

The strong Valencia did not miss the opportunity despite their absences (Harper, Arostegi, Ojeleye). Their defense was bone-breaking and the battle was fought relentlessly until the final horn. If a three-pointer from McKissick that “dried up” the Spanish team’s basket had found its way, or if the French referee Joseph Bissan had not found an offensive foul on an orthodox shot by Kanan, things might have turned out differently. Obviously you don’t play basketball with ifs and of course Olympiacos didn’t lose because of the referees.

They are not at home?

The defeat came at a difficult time as it is a difficult week and Olympiacos should start to recover by taking away Irini and Filia’s big doubles. The “Red and Whites” travel with their backs to the wall to Bologna (for Virtus) and Lyon (Villeurbanne is waiting) and know that they have to change their schedule. Before the game against Valencia they were hoping for a score of 8:6, but their score was 7:7.

Yes, nothing is lost, since there are more or less ten teams cooking in the same cauldron (with a difference of just one win), but Olympiacos is forced to stay on its feet away from its stadium, because after Lyon there is also a visitor in the Mercedes Benz Arena for the game against Alba Berlin.

By winning again, Olympiacos Piraeus will clean up the mess it has already made in the SEF, so the second round, which begins with two home games (Monaco, Milan), will put the team on the… straight path. However, the question is self-evident. Can he overcome one of his weaknesses and eventually find the chemistry and rhythm that will take him back to the top of the table?

If it had just been about one player, there might not have been the slightest doubt that the team would find its way. But now Bartzokas has to solve many different equations, and no one can be sure about the mood of the orchestra and the reverberation of the basketball melody on the EuroLeague floors. Walkup said it in his own words after the game. Win to save the ship so they can be reunited during the season, which, let’s not forget, is very long.

PS: No problem. Olympiakos had to give Peters a break because his wife’s pregnancy was difficult and the American wanted to be at their helm. Any professional would do the same and do anything to stay away from work and support his wife. End of the story.

PS 2: KAE Olympiakos Piraeus rightly condemned the racist attack on the French referee and even withdrew the ticket from the fan in question. Just because someone paid a high price doesn’t give them the right to behave badly. On the contrary: it obliges him – since he is also very close to the field – to observe the elementary rules of behavior of sports fans. Anything else is disrespectful to his team and himself…